Frederic Henry

Frederic Henry (1899-) was an American Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I. He was wounded in the Italian Front by a mortar attack, and he fell in love with nurse Catherine Barkley. After the Battle of Caporetto, the two of them fled to Switzerland, and she died of a hemorrhage in childbirth while Henry lived alone in exile at the Hotel Metropole in Wengen.

Biography
Frederic Henry was born in 1899 in the United States, and he joined the Red Cross during World War I, serving with the Italian Army as a medic. He was friends with an Italian soldier named Rinaldi, and he met English nurse Catherine Barkley through him. He attempted to seduce her, and he did not want a serious relationship until his feelings began to grow for her. Henry was wounded in the knee by a mortar shell in combat, and he was sent to a hospital in Milan, where Barkley took care of him. Their relationship developed while he was there, although the Italian Army ignored his diagnosis of jaundice and sent him back to action when they discovered him with alcohol. He fought in the 1917 Battle of Caporetto, at which point Barkley was three months pregnant with their baby. Henry and his men wandered off a trail along the Tagliamento River during the retreat from the army of the German Empire, and they crossed a bridge, but Henry noticed that there were carabineri (police) and officers on the other side. Henry resisted when some carabineri tried to arrest him, but he was eventually subdued. He found out that they were "battle police" who were searching for the people whom they believed to be responsible for the defeat at Caporetto, and he overheard the police asking a Lieutenant-Colonel about his brigade, regiment, about why he was not with his regiment, and about if he knew that an officer should be with his troops. The police told him that men like him were responsible for letting "the barbarians onto the sacred soil of the fatherland" and that "It (was) because of treachery such as (his) that (they had) lost the fruits of victory." The officer told them that if they were going to shoot them, he wanted them to do it quickly without questioning, and the police wrote down on a pad of paper that he abandoned his troops and was ordered to be shot. He was executed in the rain at the river bank, and another officer was summarily shot before he could explain his separation from his troops. Henry knew that he was due to be shot next, so he jumped in the freezing river and escaped. He headed to Milan, but found out that Barkley had been sent to Stresa, where they reunited.

They spent some time in Stresa, but Henry found out that he was due to be arrested by the Italians. Henry and Barkley left in a rowboat for neutral Switzerland, and they were directed to Locarno. The Swiss government knew that their story was false, but they gave them visas because they had passports and were able to pay for their stay in the country. They headed to the Metropole Hotel in Wengen, and they lived a quiet life in the mountains. Barkley went into labor while there, and she had a long and painful birth which left their son stillborn. She died of a hemorrhage after childbirth and died, and Henry returned to the hotel alone, without his woman or their child.